Spacious Family Home on Nantucket

“I never wanted a house on Nantucket,” says interior designer Nancy Serafini, recalling the way she balked at husband Joe’s suggestion they look for a weekend escape from their Boston home. “I went kicking and screaming.” That was 32 years, one renovation, one addition, one remodel, and one new house ago. All in Nantucket, of course. “It’s really quite the story,” Nancy says.

Architect Tom Catalano honored Nancy Serafini’s wish for a large house that would retain the feel of her family’s original cottage. “It was all about breaking the house down into smaller components,” he says. “We didn’t want the house to seem big.”

Chapter One: In 1984, the Serafini kids are four and eight. Nancy and Joe buy “a crummy little 1960 beach shack.” It turns out to be infested with mildew. “We should have torn it down right then and there,” Nancy says. “But you know—we thought we could fix it up.”

Chapter Two: Two years pass. The three-bedroom, one-bath house begins to feel cramped. “My stepfather designs a family-room addition,” Nancy says. “By now the house is darling—and I’ve become sentimentally attached to it.”

Open to the kitchen and serving as the family’s primary hangout space, the family room evinces Nancy’s preference that this house have mostly neutral interiors augmented by judicious use of pattern. The sunrise and sunset photographs are from John Duckworth Studio. “Those water photos substitute for the view we don’t have,” Nancy jokes. The aniline-dyed wood coffee table is Nancy’s own design.

Chapter Three: The children grow up, continuing to share a single bathroom with their parents. “The house wasn’t functioning that well for us anymore,” Nancy says. Over lunch, a girlfriend devises a way to add a second bath, sketching ideas on a napkin. The master bedroom gets an update; a new kitchen goes in.

Chapter Four: The plot thickens. The children marry; grand-children are born. The young families depart Boston most weekends to join Nancy and Joe in Nantucket. “But the house is too small for us all, so every time they show up Joe and I have to leave and go to a hotel,” Nancy says. “It kind of defeats the purpose of having your grandkids come to visit.” And with that, they decide to tear the house down and build new—preserving only the addition Nancy’s step-father designed and the many memories associated with it.

An RH trestle table surrounded by chairs from Century Furniture furnishes the capacious dining room.

Today, the entire family congregates on weekends and holidays in an airy, six-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath house. “We have a ton of room for kids and grandkids and friends,” Nancy says. “It’s fabulous.”

It’s also ingenious, thanks to architect Tom Catalano’s idea to divide the house into two halves connected by a simple pocket door. One side encompasses generous rooms for cooking, dining, living, and sleeping; the other includes a five-bedroom guest wing. “The idea was to make a big house not seem big,” Catalano says. “For one thing, it had to fit within a neighborhood of mostly smaller cottages. For another, it had to work as well for two people as for the entire extended family—without feeling either too empty or too full.” And it does.

All the kitchen counters are topped with leathered white quartzite. The island’s counter is a chunky two inches thick, double that of the perimeter counters, providing a subtle variation in style. The rug is from Nantucket Looms, one of Nancy’s favorite local shops. An arch romances the kitchen sink, surrounded by cabinets painted in Benjamin Moore’s “White Dove.” Gray enameled pendants from Ann-Morris Antiques are suspended over an island awash in Benjamin Moore’s “Ocean Floor.”

Cozied not only by its layout but also its interior architecture, the house wears layer upon layer of texture. Walls are clad in wood paneling, beadboard, and shiplap; ceilings are adorned with beams, themselves embellished with hand-forged iron rods spanning rooms, delivering contrast and visually lowering the scale of 17-foot cathedral ceilings. Arches abound. Beneath it all, reclaimed chestnut floorboards anchor the house, their random widths and many knots conferring a sense of history.

Totally fresh, however, is Nancy’s approach to its decor. “I have a reputation for that Sister Parish look with pattern on pattern on pattern,” she says. “I forced myself to tone that down. I wanted the house to feel more contemporary for my kids and not look typical Nantucket. It’s not nautical. You won’t find seashells anywhere.”

What you will find is a sophisticated take on relaxed weekend living. Antiques—a French laundry table here, Canton china there, and folk art practically everywhere—mingle easily with overstuffed furnishings practically begging visitors to take a nap, settle in with a good book, or unleash their inner builder. “The minute my -grandkids get here the first thing they do is tear the pillows and cushions off the couches and build forts,” Nancy says. “The kiddie construction that goes on in this house is incredible.”

The bench and the Bunny Williams-designed wing chair for Lee Jofa are dressed in a William Yeoward fabric. Nancy designed the upholstered headboard.

Hence Nancy’s penchant for what she terms “indestructible” furnishings, many of which are covered with indoor-outdoor fabrics that shrug off peanut-butter-and-jelly fingers. What isn’t easily washable or wipeable is cloaked in pattern—think florals, stripes, and damasks—in a range of unexpected blues. “You see a lot of blue and white on Nantucket, but most of it is crisp or beachy,” Nancy says. “These colors are more like a mix of aqua and teal.”

They’re also reminiscent of the sea—a good thing, Nancy says, since her home lacks a view of the Atlantic Ocean. “In hindsight, we should have probably skipped all those years of renovation and remodeling and just bought a home by the beach.” She pauses. “But then we wouldn’t be living here. This house tells our family history. It’s the story of our lives.” With a happy ending, of course.

A Pindler fabric on the headboard, bedskirt, and draperies brings cohesive pattern to the guest room.

Nancy and Joe Serafini with their family: son John and his wife, Daniele, with kids Vivie, baby Teddy, and Jack (front); daughter Kate and her husband, Peter, with son Charlie (daughter Samantha was born soon after this photo).